Taking the Highway

by M. H. Mead

  “Son, my feelings are so hard you could break a tooth eating my excrement.” Quigg glared, arms crossed. “I don’t like bad cops. I don’t like you.”

  Andre took back his hung hand. “I’m sorry you feel that way. Can I ask you a question?”

  “Make it quick.”

  “Do you know where they took everyone? Which hospital? I want to check on my friend.”

  “Who, Elway?”

  “You’ve heard? How is he?”

  “Try the morgue.”

  Andre’s back hit the doorjamb. He’d physically retreated from the news, the impact of it hurling him backward.

  “He died hours ago. Poor guy never even made it to the hospital.”

  Andre’s throat tied itself in a knot. He turned his back to Quigg and tried to swallow. “Can I . . .”

  “You know what you can do, LaCroix? You can die a slow and painful death. In the meantime, you can get out of my sight.”

  “Thanks, man. Thanks a lot.” He pushed past Quigg and made for the stairs.

  On the first floor, the property manager held out a clipboard and a light pen. “Thumb on the screen, please. On the X.”

  Andre tilted his head to look at Noelle’s face. She was close to two meters tall, and he always felt like he was staring right into her tits. Noelle was usually his source for the best jokes. Now, she just glared down at him, impatiently tapping the board.

  Andre thumbed the screen and retrieved his weapon, gave Noelle’s breasts a mock salute, and holstered the Guardian. He did not bother to reload it.

  The first floor lobby area was almost deserted. The receptionist sat at her desk. Her screen was full of crashed cars and dead bodies, the Ugly Ben logo glowing brightly in the corner. As he passed, he heard his own name, followed by his own voice. “This is my fault.” He stopped and stared at the screen. The clip was repeated and he heard himself say it again. No! He hadn’t said that. Not out loud. They’d used a voice changer, a scrambler, somehow they’d put words in his mouth. Or did they? The authenticator—the same brand the police used—flashed its logo beneath Ben’s as they replayed the clip a third time. “This is my fault.”

  Andre tried to remember the exact sequence of events, but it was like an alcoholic blackout. He leaned over the receptionist’s desk, glaring at the screen, trying to make his synapses fire in the right direction. He remembered climbing that hill, he remembered the spinners accosting him. Did he really tell them—and the world—that the crash was his fault?

  And there was Naked Jay on the screen—when did those two start working together?—asking him who was responsible. Andre covered his mouth and shook his head, as if he could prevent words from coming out of that other self’s mouth. It didn’t help. There was his own face, looking directly into the camera, saying he did it, as if he’d reprogrammed the Overdrive towers with his own hand.

  The receptionist wheeled her chair away from the desk, staring at him with wide eyes. Andre stumbled to the elevator, blindly pushing the button for his floor. Suddenly his overstuffed cubicle seemed like a refuge. He needed a place where this could make sense. A familiar chair, a familiar desk, something that wasn’t upside down and inside out.

  The Jeffs from forensics got on the elevator after him. Andre hadn’t seen them since the Shepler homicide in the zone. He nodded a greeting that wasn’t returned. Uh-oh.

  “He actually came back to work,” one of them said.

  “Some people got the nerve.”

  “You hear what he said to Ugly Ben?”

  “I heard it.” The taller of the Jeffs slid his eyes over to Andre. “One of our own. Can you believe that?”

  Andre glared them down. “I’m standing right here.”

  “Yeah? You want to make something of it?” Both men were in front of him now, exhaling heavy breath in his face. “Come on. You want to?”

  “Go ahead,” short Jeff said. He already had his hands up. “I’m due for a raise.”

  The door slid open. “Fuck you,” Andre said, and exited the elevator.

  “You already did, asshole! You fucked the whole department.”

  The doors closed on a mumbled “Shithead,” from tall Jeff.

  He heard it all the way to his office. Everyone from the dayjobbers to the janitor had a word. Andre kept his head down, kept walking, let the waves of hatred wash over him. He was an asswipe, a punce, and a twatwad. He was a traitor to the department. He was a killer, a terrorist, a miserable excuse for a cop. He wasn’t worthy to be called an officer of the law.

  He finally made it to his cubicle and pulled the flimsy half-door closed behind him. Over the tops of the walls, he could hear the spins blaring into the room. Naked Jay and Ugly Ben mixed with Tom Griffon Junior, mixed with who-knew-what.

  Andre sat in his desk chair, but heads kept prairie-dogging over the tops of the cubicle walls, popping out of sight when he noticed.

  Andre set the lights in his office to “away,” which deactivated the ones directly overhead and did nothing to darken his cubicle. The glow of his datapad added to the brightness. He ignored all incoming messages, both urgent and ordinary. The spinners were starting to get calls, now. Plenty of blame to go around. The cops, the fourths, the Overdrive system itself. The callers knew something like this would happen. They just knew it.

  I am so sorry, Elway.

  Urgent whispers outside his door, and the spins abruptly cut off. He saw the feet first—closed-toe shoes and pressed pants.

  He lifted his head. “Hi, Captain.”

  Captain Evans pursed her lips and shook her head, her braids dancing across her forehead.

  “The spins—”

  “Are always first and always wrong,” the captain said.

  “They’re saying I did it. A fourth. Or a cop. Both.”

  “Yes, they are. The news anchors are playing catch up right now. It looks bad, but give it time. They’ll tell what’s true.”

  He could breathe again. “Thanks.”

  “We both know what comes next.”

  “Yeah.” He unholstered his weapon and gave it to the captain, along with his shield.

  “I have to,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Temporary suspension. Full pay.” She weighed the Guardian in her hand. “You’re getting a nice vacation so you’d better enjoy it.”

  Andre nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

  Captain Evans touched his shoulder. “I understand what happened. Hotdogging is the ultimate ass-covering move. Get it right and you’re a hero. Even better, nobody sees if you fuck up. But honey? We all fuck up. Share the blame a little next time, okay?”

  “I wasn’t hotdogging.”

  “I know what you were—” Another curious head peeped over the cubicle wall, then disappeared.

  The captain glared over the dividers then gestured to the cubicle door. “Mr. LaCroix, let’s step into a more private location.” She took him through the maze of cubicles and into the stairwell. She closed the fire door behind them, then peered upward and downward, listening in the vast column of space. They were alone.

  “I wasn’t hotdogging,” Andre said in an urgent whisper. “It was worse than that. Much worse.”

  “What happened?”

  “Elway found a tag on me.” Andre looked at the floor and spoke through gritted teeth. “Someone wanted to stop the terrorists. To kill them. I led that person right to the place where Overdrive would break down, and I led them right to the people that did it.”

  “Why didn’t you stop them?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “The bombers or the murderers?”

  “Either.”

  “You don’t understand. If I hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t done what I did—” He could feel the aching muscles in his jaw, forcing down a memory of Elway’s crushed and broken body. “I thought I knew how big this was.” He held out his hands as if trying to take hold of the case, restrain it. Then his hands opened and fell away. “I chose to save a few lives, and lo
ok how many it cost.”

  The captain gripped the handrail and closed her eyes for a long moment, inhaling slowly, then nodded as if making up her mind. “Then I’m glad I suspended you.”

  “Next you’re going to tell me that it’s for my own good.”

  “Nope,” she said. “For mine.”

  They both fell silent as the fire door two floors below opened and shut. Footsteps. Voices. Andre reached for the door handle.

  Captain Evans caught his sleeve. “I had to call Jordan Elway’s mother. Tell her that her son is dead. I don’t want to call yours.”

  “VISITOR,” ANDRE’S APARTMENT SAID in its sultry voice. From his deep armchair in front of the window and the depths of the black mood that seemed to hang in front of him, he silently made himself two bets.

  He walked over to the buzzer. “May I help you?”

  “Open the fucking door.”

  I win, Andre thought wryly. He called the door open. Danny Cariatti bustled in with a box in his arms, heeled the door shut behind him and set his burden on the floor.

  “Beers-of-the-World?” I win again.

  “Beers-of-the-World.” Danny took off his jacket and tossed it over the chair. He stripped off his holster and weapon and looked at the hooks beside the door. Andre’s empty holster hung there like a shed snakeskin.

  “The captain has it,” Andre said. The indifference in his voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. Of course he had a backup piece. Every cop did. But the Russian-made Yavorit sat untouched in the gun safe bolted to his bedroom floor. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cleaned it, much less fired it.

  Danny passed through to the kitchen without comment. Soon, Andre heard the clinking of bottles and the chuff of his icemaker being dumped over them. Danny appeared with a tub full of ice, brown bottles with colorful labels peeking out here and there. He plonked it down between the two chairs and dropped into the other one. He fished around in the tub and pulled out two bottles, inspecting the labels. “Bali or Tongo?”

  “Balinese beer?”

  Danny shrugged and handed him the other bottle.

  Every Christmas, every birthday, and for all Andre knew, every minor holiday in between, one of Danny’s many relatives gave him what they thought was an original gift—a monthly six-pack of a different beer. On the day of his promotion to Lieutenant five years ago, Danny had received no fewer than fifty-six subscriptions to the Beers-of-the-World club. He drank the good stuff, brought the merely interesting to pot-lucks and barbecues, and poured the worst of it down the drain, but at any point in the year, his basement looked like a global party store.

  They sat in silence, drinking exotic beer. Eventually they progressed to genial argument about where exactly Tongo was located and why the beer would taste like breadfruit. When the point of contention became how either of them could say what breadfruit did or did not taste like, the whole debate became moot when Andre peered at his label again and announced his beer was not Tongan but was, in fact, Tobagonian.

  “Not Trinidadian?” Danny asked with concern.

  “Apparently not.”

  “You need to stay out of it, Andre.”

  “Trinidad?”

  “No, I mean—”

  “I know what you mean.” Despair threatened to roll over him like a wave again. He swallowed it down and chased it with another gulp of oddly sweet beer. “All my clearances have been cut off and no one from the task force will even take my calls.”

  “No one?” Danny said it with a casual lift of the eyebrows and a polite look of interest.

  “You know about Sofia.”

  “I’m a detective. I detect.”

  “You’re a nosy bastard and I’m not describing her body for you.”

  “How is it?”

  “Stellar. Athletic, flexible, ass like you’d not believe.”

  “I’d believe. She giving you the shoulder too?”

  Andre drank again, deeply. “No. I can’t say that. She showed up yesterday. I wouldn’t let her in. Told her to stay away from me. This is big enough to wreck her career too.”

  Danny snorted. “Your career ain’t wrecked, you melodramatic fuck.”

  Laughter, hoarse and unfunny, bubbled up and Andre belched at the same time. “Yeah. I can hear the Commissioner’s speech now as he hands me an award.”

  “No.” Danny’s tone was infuriatingly reasonable. “You won’t be getting a promotion anytime soon out of this. But you didn’t kill those people.”

  “Sixty-four people.”

  “I know how many people. Everyone knows. Sixty-four dead. Hundreds injured. You tried to save them.”

  “If I hadn’t—”

  “Stop.” Danny waved a beer bottle at him. “Just stop. Now. I had to crawl through five kinds of gridlock to get here because you can’t live Downriver like a reasonable cop. I brought you the beer, I’m letting you be slushy-mushy-weepy. The least you can do is listen to my bullshit as if it’s actually cheering you up.”

  “Yeah.” Andre scrubbed a hand over his face. “I saw the newsnets. Even with timed lights, the surface streets can’t handle that many cars.”

  “The monorail would have been worse. They’re packing them into the aisles.” Danny drained his first bottle and reached for a second. “The road wasn’t that bad. I cop-patrolled my way around the worst of it and once I got through the oh-zone—”

  “Is 75 shut down too? I thought it was just 94.”

  “Chill, my man. Chill. This will pass, right? It will pass.”

  “I don’t know.” Andre gestured to the comscreen. “Everyone loves a good controversy. The conspiracy theories are very . . . hell, even I’m convinced half of them are true.”

  “The first thing you need to do is shut that shit off.” Danny set his beer down and used both hands to make his point. “You don’t just sit here, you man up.”

  “And do what, exactly?”

  “When one job goes into the shitcan, you find another. I hear fourths are scarce on the ground these days.”

  “You think I can fourth.”

  “I’d pick you up.”

  “After I told the two biggest spinners in Detroit that a fourth—that I—crashed Overdrive.” Andre levered himself out of his armchair and marched to the companel. He scrolled through calls from the last two days until he found the one he wanted. He pressed the button and Bob Masterson’s face filled the screen.

  “You don’t know how long it’s taken us to get even a slice of credibility.” Bob snapped his fingers. “And it’s gone, like that. My regulars didn’t even want to pick me up today and then they demanded a discount for hazard pay. Like I’m going to crash their car! I’m the one who needs hazard pay. You ruined us, Andre LaCroix. You shit on our heads and made us take the blame for it. Don’t even think about fourthing again. No one will answer your FITs. In fact, if any single member of the union sees you fourthing, we have been cheerfully instructed to pound you into human purée.”

  The recording ended there and the companel automatically started on the next message, this one from his mom. He cut it off before the repeat of her latest tirade.

  “He can’t stop you from fourthing,” Danny said.

  “He can stop me from wanting to.”

  Danny gestured to the screen where the face of Andre’s mother stood frozen mid-sentence “How’s she doing out there? Santa Fe, right?”

  “Sedona.” Andre made a small scoffing noise, grateful for the change of subject. “Mom’s all right. She’s worried.”

  “I guess she heard. National news and everything.”

  “Not me. She’s worried about herself. She wants me to help her with some finance stuff. I’ve been putting her off because of the task force, but now—”

  “Now is the perfect time to help her.”

  “She sent me every file on her hard drive. It will take hours, days.”

  “Hours and days when nothing more is going wrong.” Danny put a hand on Andre’s shoulder and gave i
t an almost imperceptible squeeze. “You’ll get through this.”

  Andre felt his eyes burn a little with Danny’s simple kindness and he widened his eyes and looked out the window until the excess moisture evaporated. It was getting dark.

  Danny stood. “Time for home.”

  “You aren’t going to drive.”

  “I had like two beers. One and a half. From halfway around the world. I told Julie I’d be home for dinner. If I leave now, I just might make it.”

  “How is Julie?”

  “Great. Good. She said to say hi.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Well, she sort of said it.”

  “‘Daniel, if you don’t stop helping that mangy dog out of trouble, you’re going to end up with fleas yourself.’“

  Danny grinned. “Like I said, she said hi.”

  Andre saw him to the door. “Get home safe. Use the siren.”

  NIKHIL PARKED HIS CAR in the weed-infested lot and double-checked his locks. He turned away from the car, then back to it, linking the geopoint alarm to his datapad. It wouldn’t stop anyone from trying to boost his car, but it would at least let him know if it happened.

  The apartment block was a square of concrete, crumbling at the corners, the layers of spray-painted graffiti the newest thing about the place. It sat on the western edge of the oh-zone, close enough to claim solidarity with the zoners, but still within the city borders. Roads were repaired here, trash picked up, streets lit after dark. The people here had city water and electricity, not to mention police and fire protection.

  Nikhil walked around a pile of animal dung and up two flights of exterior stairs, taking the shared balcony walkway to the number that Topher had given him. He knocked, and after a terminal pause, the door opened, but instead of Topher, it was Wilma Riley on the other side of it, wearing jeans and a halter top that did nothing for her stick figure. Her hair was piled on top of her head and secured with one of those beaded clips all the girls on campus wore.

  “Oh. Hi, Wilma.” Nikhil shifted his package to the other hand. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I live here.” She opened the door wider and walked into the apartment. Nikhil followed.